What is scary?

Mornin' Y'all
This is going to be my follow-up post to my blog about The Strangers that got really really off topic.
So the question was, does reality make a horror movie scarier?
I took a week to really think about this idea and I came across a few conundrums. I don't like deception and I didn't want to go around giving filmmakers permission to lie to their audiences, but the one movie I just couldn't stop thinking of was The Blair Witch Project. Now I have to start this out by saying that I was still in grade school when this movie came out, and admittedly a little gullible, but I wholeheartedly believed all of the pre-release hype. I really thought that these kids had disappeared in the woods never to be heard from again and even before I saw the movie I was just really freaked out by the notion. There was even a little documentary on the Sci-Fi channel with interviews with the families and I ate all that shit up. I really wanted to go and see the movie, but was also a little afraid of what I might see.
About a week before I saw it the curtain was torn away, and it was all revealed to be a hoax. It was that feeling of being the butt of a big practical joke, that feeling of "Oh wow they really got me." But there was something else. They really did have me fully taken in with this story, and though the movie still did totally freak the hell out of me at the time, I always wish I had seen it before I found out it wasn't real. Because I know for sure in that case it really would have heightened the whole experience.

With all of that said, I don't really think that another film maker could ever pull that off, nor do I think that modern horror movie makers should be tagging their movies with "Based On True Events" unless they actually are. And as I expressed in my previous blog, I don't mean loosely based on something that may have happened.

More importantly this whole idea got me into thinking about what makes something truly scary.
Why do some people need that label when others don't? Why do ghost stories bug some people out when others depend on a stalking killer? Or a horrible blood-thirsty monster?
Then I realized a very interesting correlation. Horror is a lot like comedy in the way it operates. It is always very subjective, in the same way comedy is. There cannot be a definitive scary because different things scare different people for different reasons. It is all about personal perspective. A lot of it is based on personal phobias or even straight from the persons experiences. At the time when Blair Witch came out I was very much into the idea of paranormal experiences. Ghosts, poltergeists, and any idea of a haunting mostly due to my discovery of Weird N.J. which I am hoping most of you are familiar with, if not look it up.
I wanted to go visit all of these spooky places basically in search of some ghoulie or ghostie. To walk backwards around Devil's Tower three times to see if Old Hob himself would show up. Or trek through the Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil. So the thought of a group of kids going off in search of such a thing and never returning was personally distressing, and definitely made me hold off on any adventures. So I was bringing my own thoughts and paranoia into the theater with me.
My mother told me a story of when she and my aunt went to see The Exorcist when it was first released. My aunt apparently fainted in the theater due to the intensity of the film. Now I think we can all agree that The Exorcist still holds up as one of the scariest films of all time, but could this severe reaction be due to their Catholic school upbringing?
It is the same in comedy, we laugh harder when we can somehow relate to a circumstance. So wouldn't it make sense to think that if we can relate to something we would also scream more?
I am posing a lot more questions in this post than I am answering I know.
Ok lets go for an old standby, Freddie Kruger. Why so scary? Because we all have to sleep! We have all had really bad nightmares that made us not want to fall back to sleep, but sometimes sleep cannot be avoided. The simple idea of inescapability is scary.
But again I am sort of all over with this blog.
There are some things we consider universally scary just like there are things we consider universally funny, but there just can't be a definitive because of their subjective nature.
And back to the topic of "does reality make it scarier" in a way it does. We like the idea of truth and reality even in our obvious escapist pursuits such as film and television and literature. Unfortunately that is why reality TV exists. We all know full well that "reality TV" is not what real life is like and never could be simply because of the fact that constant surveillance on a desert island with strangers greatly changes the natural reactions any normal person would have. But we like the idea that they are just "real" people instead of actors. We like the fact that we can fool ourselves into thinking that these are "real" situations these people are being put in. We can even think "what would I do in such a situation".
But I am getting way off track again.
Things just seem to touch our hearts more when we believe they really happened. Look at the whole A Million Little Pieces Oprah nonsense. That was something people really believed in and connected with because they thought it was true. But the shit totally hit the fan when they found out a lot of it was not. Which again is why I don't think film makers should say "Based on true events" when the so called "events" were ridiculously exaggerated or just flat out didn't happen.
But for the most part, like I said, its all subjective. I don't really need to think something is real in order to be scared by it or amused by it or be in anyway emotionally effected by it. I just need it to be a good story, which I think is what a lot of these film makers are lacking, or at least insecure about. Maybe they feel that it isn't scary enough standing on its own two feet, but if people think that it really happened then they will be really scared.
Let me say this to you horror movie makers, just write something strong and scary enough instead of relying on some gimmick. If you think it isn't terrifying without the being "TRUE" then bring it in for another draft.